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Scenes from a Marriage
Cinema 5 Distribution | released = | runtime = 281 minutes (TV version)[http://www.sfi.se/en-GB/Swedish-film-database/Item/?type=MOVIE&itemid=4934 The Swedish Film Database: Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973)] retrieved 2011-07-18 167 minutes | language = Swedish | country = Sweden | budget = USD$150,000 }} Scenes from a Marriage (Swedish: Scener ur ett äktenskap) is a 1973 Swedish TV series written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The story explores the disintegration of a marriage between Marianne, a lawyer, and Johan, a professor (played respectively by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) over a long period, using a restricted cast, a naturalist, hyper-realistic cinematic style, claustrophobic close-ups, and strings of rapid, articulate monologues. After major success in Sweden, the series became notorious worldwide when it was condemned for allegedly inspiring a spike in Scandinavian divorce rates, which almost doubled in the year of its release. Episodes This plot summary is for the 281-minute, TV miniseries version of the work (the feature film retains the episode names as chapter titles). Each episode concludes with long, quiet, comforting shots of Fårö landscapes, as a "relief" from the up-close, tense and claustrophobic episodes. Each episode is structured around one critical scene, described below, the rest of each episode dedicated to discussion and aftereffects. Some of the episodes occur months or years apart. Cast * Liv Ullmann as Marianne * Erland Josephson as Johan * Bibi Andersson as Katarina * Jan Malmsjö as Peter * Gunnel Lindblom as Eva ** Rossana Mariano as 12-year-old Eva * Anita Wall as Fru Mrs Palm * Barbro Hiort af Ornäs as Fru Jacobi * Lena Bergman as Karin, sister of Eva * Wenche Foss as Modern * Bertil Norström as Arne Production The TV version of Scenes from a Marriage is almost five hours long, split in six episodes. In the United States, a 167-minute version was released to cinemas. The film was made on a $150,000 budget and was shot mostly in Fårö, Gotlands län in Sweden. Reception The film won several accolades including BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Liv Ullmann (Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama), and a Best Foreign Language Film. A sequel, Saraband, was released theatrically in 2003. In 2008, a theatrical adaption by Joanna Murray-Smith was performed at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen. In popular culture Dallas and Knots Landing creator David Jacobs based the latter series on Scenes from a Marriage. The series focused on four married couples whose marriages were in various stages: the newlywed couple, the ideal couple, the couple whose marriage was in trouble, and the couple that recently reconciled. The series ran from 1979-1993. In the 1984 SCTV skit/commercial parody "Scenes from an Idiot's Marriage", Martin Short plays Jerry Lewis playing a writer who goes through a comedic version of what goes on in Scenes from a Marriage, complete with Lewis's pratfalls and constant mistakes in pronunciation of Swedish names (he constantly mistakes the name Sven Gunderbloom as Sy Worthenson when his wife (Andrea Martin) announces that she is divorcing him and giving him Gunderbloom's name as her lawyer) and his later pratfalls serving drinks at a dinner party when he gets carried away with using a seltzer bottle, spraying the water everyplace. In 1991, Woody Allen co-starred in Paul Mazursky's Scenes from a Mall, a dark comedy about a deteriorating marriage. Allen's similarly realist film Husbands and Wives (1992) includes several nods to Scenes from a Marriage, including a wife who will not show her poetry to her husband. In an April 2011 New York Times Opinionator article, titled "Too Much Relationship Vérité", Virginia Heffernan compares An American Family to Scenes from a Marriage: :It’s now the future. And the 12-hour PBS time capsule, which will make a rare reappearance next week at the Paley Center in Manhattan and on some public-TV affiliates beginning Saturday, looks more like performance art than social science. Hammy stunts for the camera alternate with Bergman-esque staging. ''("Scenes from a Marriage", Bergman’s fictional TV series, also appeared in 1973, in Sweden.) References External links * * * Criterion Collection essay by Phillip Lopate Category:1973 films Category:1970s drama films Category:Swedish films Category:Swedish drama films Category:Swedish-language films Category:Films directed by Ingmar Bergman Category:Films set in Sweden Category:Films shot in Sweden Category:Independent films Category:Plays based on films